Product Reviews by KVR Members

Version 3 of the Speedsoft Virtual Sampler, aka VSampler, is out now. But I still use 2.75. Why? Well, the main reason is that version 3 crashes every time I try to use it within the forte Ensemble host application. So, this review is on version 2.75.

I use VSampler now in very many of my band's songs. It's fairly basic and has a ponderous user interface, but it mostly works and is pretty cheap. The documentation is pretty weak, but if you can find it, there's a tutorial online that explains things pretty well. From time to time, though, something goes wrong and it takes me 45 minutes of trial-and-error clicking to fix it.

For a while, I used the ability to host VSTi's inside of VSampler, but don't need that anymore.

Edirol SuperQuartet is a fundamental foundation of my softsynth rack. My main use of SuperQuartet is for the electric piano sounds. I evaluated nearly all the electric piano softsynths out there (except Lounge Lizard - for some reason they don't offer a demo version) and found I liked this one the best. So I bought it!

Obviously, I'm very happy with the electric piano sounds generated. The acoustic piano sounds are pretty decent, too, although I hardly ever use them. And, ironically, 3/4 of the functionality of this program - the guitars, basses, and drums - is totally wasted on me. That's right - I felt it was worth the money just for the Rhodes imitation.

Two words of caution. First, every once in a while, SuperQuartet demands that you insert the setup CD into your CD drive. Boy, I really hate copy protection. It's very irritating to be rehearsing (or worse, playing a gig in front of a thousand people) and have to stop and put a CD in your PC. Second, the DXi version saves a huge amount of performance data to its host application - something like 200 kB. I can't imagine what it's saving, but it means my forte rack files are several megabytes, since there's one save for each song my band plays.

Note, these annoyances are in version 1.00, which is what I've been using. I just now found out there's a version 1.5 update available. The single output limitation mentioned by Midiworks2 in his review has been removed in version 1.5, according to Edirol's readme file.

I downloaded Cheeze Station on a lark, but I've fallen in love with it. It doesn't do much, but I like what it does and have never had any stability problems with it. I'm now using it in more and more of my band's live songs, ranging from backing strings to lead synth solos. I always get the feeling that the sounds are very "full" - not tinny or thing at all.

My drummer says it's perfectly named because it sounds so cheesy, but I think it gives our material a unique sound and I'm not afraid to sound cheesy. I just noticed that the Big Tick website is accepting donations, since this is free software, so I think I'll go drop a few bucks in the kitty.